It Would Be My Privilege

I'm a regular reader of The Blag Hag and generally enjoy Jen's blog.  I do however find it hard to relate when she starts talking about feminism.  I often find myself rolling my eyes and thinking that she really needs to get a life.  Harsh I know, but my opinion nonetheless.

One such occasion related to a post by The Friendly Atheist (another favourite of mine).   Hemant had written a post discussing an interview with Kari Byron from Mythbusters.  He ended the post with "This whole post was really just an excuse to post a picture of Kari."  It was an obvious tongue in cheek comment about someone that Hemant admires for her mind and views but who also happens to be a very attractive woman.  I read the comment and laughed.

Jen's response was "only appreciating a woman for her looks and not for her intelligence is not a joke - it's a negative mindset that joking helps perpetuate."

To this my response was "Enough already!" <eyes rolling>

These posts were written several months ago and I had pretty much forgotten about them until the fairly recent "Elevatorgate" scandal.  A good summary of all the craziness that ensued can be found here.  In short, Rebecca Watson (Skepchick) was propositioned by a man she didn't know while alone in an elevator with him in the middle of the night after a conference.  All of the comments surrounding this situation really got me thinking.  The one that really tipped the scales for me was Jen's response to Richard Dawkins after he pretty much blew off Rebecca Watson's point that this incident made her feel at best uncomfortable and at worst fearful.

With that background, I'll get to my point.  Jen pointed out that Richard has the privilege in this situation of being a man and therefore couldn't possibly fully understand what it feels like as a woman to be vulnerable to a man:  "You don't live in fear of rape, knowing that one wrong misinterpretation of a couple words could lead down that road."  I, as a woman, completely understand how Rebecca felt in that elevator.  It's the same reason that I don't go out alone at night.  I acknowledge that most men are probably good, but what if I happen to run into one that wants to hurt me?  How can I defend myself against someone who is most likely larger and stronger than me?


This concept of privilege in turn got me thinking about feminism.  In my fairly sheltered life I haven't really had the misfortune of having to deal with much sexism.  I have been taught all my life that women are equal to men.  I found myself in a profession where men and women are fairly equally represented.  Of the four managers in my department, two are men and two are women.  The Assistant Vice President is a man, but the Vice President is a woman.  I feel no sexual discrimination whatsoever.  It never really occurred to me, in this day and age, that this was in any way out of the ordinary.

Then I thought about the life of The Blag Hag.  Jen is a student at the University of Washington working towards her PhD in Genome Sciences.  She's a scientist.  Now how many female scientists can you think of?  Not one other than Marie Curie actually comes to my mind - not a good thing.  She is in an extremely male dominated field.  I would hazard a guess that she feels sexual discrimination first hand on a regular basis.  It's no wonder she's so much more sensitive to it. 

So in the end, I realize that my privilege has blinded me to the fact that gender discrimination is alive and well.  We women need to continue fighting for equal rights and respect.  I still strongly disagree with Jen's reaction to Hemant on the Kari Byron comment - it was after all an innocent joke from a man who consistently shows respect and admiration for women.  In taking a step back though, I can now see where Jen is coming from and why she reacts the way she does to situations that I find trivial.  Perspective is a good thing.

Agnostic vs. Atheist

Amusing, but the spelling drives me nuts!

The Friendly Atheist had a post on this topic in May.  I disagree with the post itself and found the comments to be all over the map, but it all got me thinking.


From Merriam-Webster
Agnostic - 1 : a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
Atheism -  a : a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity



By its very nature the existence of some sort of god isn't knowable, unless of course said god one day decides to unequivocally show itself to the masses - maybe by calling a televised press conference (you can be sure that Fox News would be there).  My belief here falls cleanly under the definition of agnostic.

But it's not that easy.  While I don't believe anyone can say that there absolutely is no god, at the same time I've seen absolutely no evidence to lead me to believe that there is a god. I often hear the phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".  That's not quite true.  A more accurate statement would be that "absence of evidence is not proof of absence" although that doesn't have near the fancy ring to it.  It is absolutely evidence of absence.  Given this evidence of absence I choose to believe that there is no god.  Here I fall under the atheist definition.

So which am I?  I have long considered myself to be agnostic, but not because it's a "safe way" of saying I don't believe in god, or because the word atheist "sounds evil and wrong and scary" as was suggested by Hemant.  It's because I think the term agnostic best defines my beliefs.

   
My type of agnosticism has changed over the years.  There was a time when I quite strongly believed that there was some sort of supreme, supernatural being that was responsible for everything, but I still didn't think it had any relation to the religions of the world or any of the holy books.  At that time I would have been considered an Agnostic Theist (also known as a Weak Theist).  I referred to myself as a deist or simply spiritual.

Gradually as I did more research in my journey for truth and knowledge, I began to lean farther away from believing in the supernatural.  Now I would consider myself to be an Agnostic Atheist (also known as a Weak Atheist).  I am fairly certain that there is no god, but I have no way of proving it, but I will live my life as if it has been proven. 

One other item from Hemant's post:  "no one says they’re agnostic about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. No one says they’re agnostic about Zeus or Thor. So why are they agnostic about “God”?"
I am atheist about the FSM because it is an admittedly made up thing.  No one actually claimed that it was real so I have no problem classifying it as fiction.  I am atheist about Roman and Greek mythology because the general consensus is that they were myths - that the people of the time made up stories to try to explain the world around them.  Anything that is acknowledged  to have been made up does not deserve to be given any credence as fact.

If you ask me about the current world religions, I would also respond that I am atheist about these.  The holy books have been sufficiently discredited for my needs in order to dismiss them as utter fiction.  But the fact that they are still believed by so many is enough to open a crack in my mind to the possibility of something supernatural that may have kick started these beliefs.  Let's be clear though that this is a minuscule crack - enough to keep me in the agnostic category but not anywhere near big enough to have any effect whatsoever on my life.

In reading the comments to Hemant's post, I'm really surprised by the negative views on this.  So many of the atheists view the agnostics as "not having balls" and so many of the agnostics view the atheists as arrogant.  I'm happy to see that some understand that it's just semantics.  It doesn't really matter what we label ourselves - we're all pretty much on the same page.